I’m guessing that the current plan is to move the xoviat version (a community course) to the new Deck platform (or delete it), but to keep the app-friendly official version on the Memrise platform? Please could you check with your colleagues and advise what the actual plan is? - thanks, - Ian.
It would be nice to hear Memrise’s official response.
But my impression is that even the Ben Whately courses and other older Memrise courses will be part of the move to Decks because they include crowd-sourced mems. I think the whole point of all of this is that Memrise is protecting themselves from lawsuits, and assuring access to customers living in authoritarian regimes, by making sure that Memrise is only selling access to vetted content. All those mems were great for learning, but selling access to them has always seemed problematic.
A lot of abandoned courses are of course looked after by a Contributor(acting as a Curator or Custodian), so hopefully you’ll also contact them.
The other issue you are considering (thanks) is how can keen users ask to support abandoned courses or assist active creators, as in the past we contacted ‘you’ and you either contacted the Creator or made us a Contributor automatically.
I think it would be good if you invited (urged) all creators and contributors (when you contact them) to made an appearance here, so users can contact them if they need to, like we could automatically in the previous linked forums.
Hi @ian_mn thanks for your questions and for your contributions to those courses.
Yes all those courses will be transferred to Decks - the AQA Spanish, the First 5000 Words of Spanish, and Ben’s Introductory Spanish ones.
The official courses are those under the Memrise user - https://www.memrise.com/user/Memrise/courses/teaching/ - so Ben’s courses are considered community ones. Sorry I know that’s a bit confusing given he is Memrise co-founder.
Unfortunately the plan isn’t to have mobile app support for community courses. We’re looking again at the data on mobile usage for community learning though, and we’ll make an announcement if the plan changes.
Just to make sure I understood your last comment right - did you say that the edits you make to the First 5000 Words of Spanish course are being automatically reflected to Ben’s courses? That would be puzzling if so.
I’m not sure you’ll be able to see this, but a change I just made (to the first word in the xoviat course - as an example) was immediately reflected in the BenWhately course.
If this feature could be continued after the transfer to the new Deck platform, I think that would be a very good thing. I should also point out the Ben Whately course sequence contains ~4600 words, so it’s definitely not just an introductory course for beginners.
I should also say that I much appreciate your replies - undoubtedly the best/ most helpful responses from Memrise that I’ve seen over several years.
We’re not planning on live streaming the meeting, and we’re aware that we’re restricting the discussion to those who happen to be in London, but we’re keen to have an open, forthright conversation in person, to show people the Decks app, to discuss people’s hopes for it, and at this point we think that’s better done without live-streaming it / splitting between live / virtual participants.
Following up, I’m sure we can set up some times for video calls next week with the broader community. I’ll follow up afterwards on that front.
If anyone else is planning on coming, do let us know. But this seems a good number for the kind of forthright, open, exploratory chat to get feed back on Decks ? Memrise and a sense of how we can best serve your needs with it as possible.
My understanding is that if one creates a completely different course, then one uploads the whole line of data BUT if you are creating the list, by typing a word (or phrase), it selects the data to populate the whole entry; so presumably a change on one course to the database will be replicated elsewhere.
Ben’s 5000 word courses are definitely linked with the three available elementary/intermediate/advanced courses.
It also happens to me for Portuguese Brazil.
When I learn a new word in the 5000 course, it is immediately marked as learned in the elementary course.
Word per word, level per level.
Actually this is very nice to see my total progress when I will have finished the first elementary course level wise.
The only thing which is not reflected are the points and course ranking; this appears only in the 5000 leaderboard of your 5000 dedicated course and is not replicated over to the other course (sadly to say) per day / week / month / total.
I would have nothing against if my 5000 course points progress for ranking were replicated to the other three
May I suggest to Ben and Ed to do the same with your courses on your new Decks platform?
Please could I request that you and your Memrise colleagues take care when classifying a course as abandoned - and taking corresponding action.
I’ve created some courses that are now four or five years old - with most errors having been fixed long ago. So they may appear to have been abandoned by the course author (me), but I’m still very happy to fix errors that are pointed out. All of these courses have current, active users, and [Course Forum] threads available for comments etc. https://www.memrise.com/user/ian_mn/courses/teaching/
Now wait a second - does that mean that abandoned courses are moved to some kind of purgatory? Who would decide about whether or not a course is actually abandoned? I sure do hope that such courses do only get hidden rather than completely and irrevocably deleted.
I don’t think that was implied. It’s just a simple request that Memrise should (continue) to take all reasonable steps to contact the course creator (or any subsequently appointed contributor/custodian) before they grant [further] editorial powers to someone else. There could be good reasons why a course contributor has been absent for a period of time. In the past, Memrise (mostly through Lien, when she was employed there) has been assiduous in its attempts to establish contact with an absent course creator before granting contributor status to another person. I see no reason why this would change. Like Ian - and, no doubt, many other dedicated course creators - I would be very unhappy if someone was given control of any of my courses without reasonable steps having first been taken to contact me. I don’t see any need to move the course(s) in question into any kind of “purgatory” while these steps are being taken and I didn’t read Ian’s post as suggesting such a thing should happen.
As with anything else concerning computers this could be automated. Course creators have an associated email address. If a course is not edited within N days (let’s say 600 days) then the system sends out an email telling that if this course is not edited it’s added to a purgatory list where someone could claim the course. After let’s say another 600 days in the purgatory this course is removed (not that course data is light and should not be a burden for servers excluding any huge audio file collections.
What would you see as being the trigger for starting the “N days” clock? If you have in mind the date of a request in the forum that an edit may be required, a problem might be that not all course creators have joined the forum and not all forum posters place their posts in the correct forum topic. So the course creator may be unaware of the request and the course could end up in “purgatory” unnececesarily.
There’s not much wrong with the system that has been in operation to date ie a user asks Memrise to check if the course creator is still active and Memrise then emails the course creator, giving them a reasonable period to respond before deciding whether to appoint a contributor/custodian.
It was a little more straightforward when we had course fora directly linked to their courses in the learning site!
I’m just looking at how for example Google checks the free voice phone services, if I don’t use it for a while I’m getting an automated reply asking me to use the phone number or I use it.
I would think if a course is not edited for over two years it is considered abandoned by the original course creator.
